We had a nice day getting school done, doing things around the RV, taking the truck to the dealer and walking around Huntington Beach, and finally relaxing by the heated pool.
It’s nice to wake up with the windows open, I mean curtains open, and not have neighbors next to you so you don’t have to worry, and see a nice view outside, no fog on the windows, and also know it’s a bit warmer outside. It’s 46 right now, so it’s very nice compared to most of our prior days in a while. We can leave a crack on the windows open, and it helps a lot with the condensation, and so we have almost no condensation now.
I got Bia up as usual, and will be leaving in a little over an hour to take the truck for its 40,000 mile maintenance. wow… already. Feels like just a few weeks ago I took it to the 30,000 maintenance in Idaho Falls. This one is a little bigger, and I’ll have to do oil and filter changes too as those are near 10% now.
Bia got going on her school work, and I finished getting ready. I then woke Carol up so she could get Bella up soon, and then help the girls with anything they needed. I got Bella’s school material aside and ready for her before I left. Then, I left to go to the dealer around 6:45am. It’s only a 20-25 minute drive to get there, and it was mainly highways. It was pretty foggy as I drove out, low visibility too. There were a few spots where it was hard to see the other side of the road, but I don’t think it was too dangerous as there were few people out, and most people were going very slow. Also, it was somewhat bright, so it felt a little better and under control.
When I got to the place the GPS took me, it was a Jeep dealer… hahahaha… had to look across the street to find the service entrance for the RAM place, I guess they all have the same address, but the service area in on the RAM side. I checked in, the guy did the paperwork, and then gave me the bomb surprise… estimated cost for this 40k service… $2k! Ouch! Darn, I knew it would be more expensive to do some service intervals on this truck, but was hoping more like what I paid to have the Mercedes serviced at the dealer, but nope.. this was more than double. Yikes. It’s only a few service windows that will require differential servicing, brake fluid, etc all in one, so hopefully this size of bill won’t happen again. Plus, when I’m back home I’ll take it to the non dealer mechanic for those, much cheaper. I don’t think it helped that I’m in Newport Beach \ Huntington Beach either. I signed all the papers and the guy told me it’d be like 1pm or so before the truck was ready, so I had a long time to kill until then, it was not even 8am yet. I grabbed my stuff, went outside, and looked in the GPS to see if the beach was somewhat close, and it was a straight shot from there. I was right on Beach Boulevard, and just had to walk towards the beach. I didn’t even look at how far it was, just decided I’d walk and kill time. Maybe if I found a decent place to sit, I could do some work as well since I had my laptop in the backpack. So, I started walking. There was pretty much no-one else out on the sidewalks, and for most of the first hour of walking, I probably saw maybe 2 people on the streets, aside from cars driving by. Everything was still closed as it was still early, and a few coffee places were open, so I got some coffee at Starbucks (mainly due to their convenient location), and kept walking. When I was almost done with my coffee, I needed to pee really bad, and there just was no place for that. No gas station with convenience store, no mall, nothing. I had to go really bad. There was a homeless guy walking behind me for some time, and I was in an area where the wall from the gated community on my right side had these indented blocks here and there, which looked like the perfect little spot to go in and hide from incoming traffic, and pee! hahahaha… that’s what I did. I just walked into the spot, got close to the corner so cars driving by would not see me, and did my thing. hahahahah… the homeless guy almost caught up to me, but I was quick and got back to the walk and kept going.
When I finally got to the beach at Huntington Beach, I had walked for 2 hours and put in 6 miles. I walked around the beach front for a bit, it was all still foggy, but it looked like the sun was starting to peak in. The beach there is huge, lots of sand between the walkway and the water. It’s very long as well, and the paths and walkways are pretty wide as well. There were a good number of people walking, or biking around, and unfortunately I think about 25% of them were not wearing masks, and didn’t have one on them, at least not one in sight. Most of the people walking with no masks were older too, so I don’t know what they put in the water around here that makes them invincible, but that is just insane. I wanted to be back by the dealership around noon, then grab something to eat and then get the truck, so I started walking back. The walk back was nice, it was warmer then, so I had to take my sweatshirt off and put it in the back pack. I walked around some smaller malls on the way back, and stopped at a few pharmacies looking for Zinc. I’ve been taking Zinc for a few years now to boost immune system and I feel it has worked great for me, I rarely get sick (knock on wood). I guess someone got the memo out on Zinc as it was all sold out. I found some at the 4th stop at some CVS, and got a brand I never heard of, but I got it. Should be good for a few months now. hahahah… Can’t pass the 2 for 1 deals. Also, within walking back for one hour, I was feeling tired already and could tell my energy was draining. The rest of the walk was a bit slower, and my body was getting stiffer too. I walked in front of the dealership around noon, and that was 12 miles later, and over 4 hours of total walking.
From there, I looked for a place to get some food, and a beer. Nothing was open with any place to sit, so I would not be able to just get food and sit and eat. I decided to get a beer at a liquor store and have it somewhere in a parking lot. Hahahaha.. totally felt like a homeless, drinking my beer from a paper bag at first. I just took it out later and just walked around the parking lot, having a beer, like it was a red bull or something. No big deal. Then, I walked to a Chipotle and got a big spicy burrito. I could not just eat there, so I went back to the dealer and checked in. The truck was not ready, so I just sat outside and had the burrito. Again, felt like a homeless person eating outside by the curb. But, whatever. :). The truck took a while longer to be ready, so I talked to some people online, chatted with my brother for a while, and put some notes on posts on the computer. It was almost 2pm when I got the message the truck was ready. Dang! That too forever. I went in, paid almost $2,000 for the service… yikes! And left with a washed truck, and all fresh fluids. :). Should be good for a few months now before I hit another service mark.
I drove back using the beach front since the weather was nice and the sun was out. I definitely want to go back to the area with Carol and the girls, good spots to bike around in Huntington Beach, and also want to go to Newport Beach’s beach area. After I got back, I just sat and relaxed for some time. I was pretty tired.
While I was out, Carol had helped the girls with school pretty much from the beginning of the morning. She also took the time to do some cleaning and organizing. She did some deep cleaning, dusting, etc. Even cleaned the fans, space heaters, etc. She also found a few things we have not used that we can get rid off and donate. By time I got back, Bella was pretty much done with school, but Bia still had some math work to finish. Carol had made lunch and took care of dishes, and also did laundry. She said she loved doing laundry here, they have lots of nice machines, and it’s all nice and clean.
When the girls were all done with school, and we had relaxed a bit, Carol put our names in the list to use the pool and hot tub area for 4:30pm, so we headed there and were in the water by 5. That was pretty awesome. We had the entire area for ourselves. The pool is heated and was actually nice. The hot tub was pretty hot. It’s all salt water, which was interesting. We soaked in and relaxed. The girls played in the pool for some time while Carol and I relaxed in the hot tub and chatted. The tub was pretty hot, so we had to get out a bit here and there. We had a great relaxing time there, and it was nice to have it all to ourselves. Then, we headed to the showers. The shower rooms here were also empty, so we enjoyed nice hot showers, with nice water pressure and no worries about running out of water, or tight space, or fogging up the trailer. hahahah.. Small things we can enjoy when the campground is nice and also kind of empty.
After we were all done with showers, we had dinner. Carol had made chili (with no meat), so we had that for dinner and it was great. After dinner, it was a bit late already, so we got the girls ready for bed. I had some work stuff to wrap up, so I did that while Carol tucked them in. Then Carol read a book while I wrapped up and we were all in bed by 10. Early night here. Maybe Carol read a bit more, but I was out.
We had a little different day, but everyone had a good day and we enjoyed a relaxing evening by the heated pool and hot tub.